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Now, I have a question for you, especially if you're a parent or a grandparent, an aunt, an uncle, or maybe you work with kids, maybe you're a teacher. Who in here has ever dealt with a difficult child? Okay, all right. Who in here was a difficult child growing up? Okay, okay, you have good honesty. Okay, so now I have three kids. I love them to death. And for the most part, my kids are pretty easy for the most part, they're not too problematic. But this past year, I experienced, no joke, the first real temper tantrum one of my kids had, okay? And it was bad. Okay, so here you go. This is how it happened. We were at the airport just getting back from a vacation. Come on. And so for a whole surprise vacation on top of that, so for a whole five days, my youngest son, Hayden, had unlimited ice cream, got to stay up late, had a great time. But then on our early flight home at the airport, I can see that him not getting sleep was gonna backfire on me, okay? And so I was kind of walking on eggshells with him a little bit 'cause I could see that he wasn't my normal sweet little boy. He was more like a sticky little gremlin already. And so here you go, we're at the airport, we walk past a Starbucks and he sees a cake pop and it's like nine in the morning. And he was like, "Dad, I need a cake pop." And in my head, I'm like, you just ate your body weight in ice cream all week. Like it's time to be healthy, right? And I'm like, well, okay. I know how this is gonna go if I tell him no to this. So I say, "I'm gonna be a fun dad." And I said, "Hayden, let's get a cake pop. We're still on vacation." And so we're starting, we're walking over to the Starbucks, when all of a sudden, no joke, take a whole herd of people with suitcases who just must have got off a plane and were trying to catch another plane before it left, come at us, right? They're like, I mean, they're coming fast. So I have Hayden's hand, and so they're coming right at us, so all I do is begin to walk around the crowd, which takes us out of his sight for Starbucks. And in that moment of me walking around this crowd, Hayden was convinced that his dad was a liar. And was not gonna give him a cake pop. And so what did he do? He fell on the ground, screamed out of a sitcom temper tantrum. Like, I didn't know what to do with it. I was like, is he okay? Like, I think he's broken. So I'm looking at him like, what is going on? And I pick him up and he's screaming and yelling. And he's like, "Cake pop." I'm like, "I'm trying to get you one." And then my dad's there with us, and he looks at me, and he's like, "I'll take him to the bathroom if you need me to." And I'm like, "Dad, it's not the '90s anymore. We gotta address his big feelings, okay?" And so I'm talking to him, I'm trying to work with him. And then at this point, though, he's going so out of control, I can't give him a cake pop anymore. Because now, if I give him a cake pop, this is acceptable behavior. And so I have a predicament. There's a conundrum going on here. And so for no joke, over an hour at the airport, I thought they were gonna call the authorities on me. He's going nuts, and then I don't give him the cake pop. And finally, before we board our flight to Richmond, he walks up to me and says,"Daddy, I'm sorry." And gives me a big hug. He still didn't get a cake pop though. I was proud. But kids can be difficult, right? It can be challenging. Parenting is hard, especially in today's culture. Our kids are growing up with pressures that even my generation never had. Anxiety, social media, access to things that no kids should have, should be able to navigate by themselves. And here's what I know. Here's what I know to be true, though, about you and about me. When it comes to parenting, we want to get it right. We want to get this thing right. We want to win at this. And so that's why we are starting a two-part series called Parenting on Purpose. Now, I got to say something before the people in here with adult children or no kids, before you check out for the next two weeks, stay with me. Okay, stay with me, because if you're a Jesus follower, the next generation is very important to you. The next generation is your concern. It is your concern. And here's one of the biggest problems in our culture. We expect one household to raise a kid on their own. But raising emotionally healthy, spiritually strong kids takes more than one family. It takes three families. So what do you mean, Jacob? Here you go. The first family is your family. It's your mom and dad. Either biological, adopted, blended, whatever that can be. But it's home front. It's the main front. But then there's the second family. That's your aunts and uncles, your grandparents, close friends who are basically like family. And then there's the third family. And that is a healthy biblical-based Jesus-following church. And that is so important. And that is why we offer LVC kids and LVC youth every week. Not because we just wanna give you a 65-minute break. That's a bonus. But because we want to partner with you in raising your kids. Here you go. I was a youth pastor for a long time down in Virginia Beach. And I knew, even though we attracted kids whose parents weren't very involved in their lives and had a lot of different problems, I knew I was never their primary discipler, that the parent is the primary discipler. And the church's job is to come beside the parents, to come beside the family, provide resource, help, care, prayer, whatever it takes to help raise healthy kids. And so if you're a part of LVC, I want you to know you're a part of raising kids. You're a part of raising the next generation, because we're all in this together. So that's why you gotta stay with me for the next two weeks, all right? And if you do have kids, I really want you to lean in and listen because I do believe that God wants us to raise a generation that's on fire and passionate for Him, that's going all out for Him. Let me say that one more time. I believe that God wants us to raise a generation that is passionate and on fire for him, amen? All right, so we're gonna figure this one out together. And with a dad who has an eight-year-old and two five-year-olds, I'm in it with you, okay? So I'm not saying I got all the answers, I'm in the fire with you, all right? So here we go, we're gonna start in the Bible. That's always a good place to start. We're gonna look at in Deuteronomy. There is this prayer, it's one of the most important prayers in Judaism. Faithful Jews prayed it every morning, every evening, this is how it goes. In Deuteronomy 6, it says this, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your heart." Check this part right here."Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down, when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates." Another way to say that is families should spend daily time with God. Families should spend daily time with God. If you're gonna parent on purpose, we cannot settle for simply calling ourselves cultural Christians. We just can't be cultural Christians just because we're not this or not that, I guess I'm a Christian. Just 'cause I live in the United States, I guess I'm a Christian. No, no, no, no. because there's a difference between identifying as a Christian and actually following Jesus. There's a big difference. Some families, they might pray when life gets hard, they might go to church on Christmas and Easter, come on. They're the CEO Christians, Christmas Easter only. It's not my own joke, okay. Maybe they show up at the costume bash, get some free candy, come on. But following Jesus isn't just something our family does, it's the foundation of everything we do. It's the foundation. That's what following Jesus as a family does. So how do we raise kids who genuinely love God, especially in the early years, no one has more influence over your kids than you do. I actually would say, even throughout your whole life, no one has more influence over your kids than you do. You always say, even for all my parents that have teenagers, you think, no, I don't. Yes, you do. 'Cause the way you respond to your kids in some of their adolescent seasons says a lot about how they're gonna grow up and respond to situations later in life. But here you go, here you go, so how do we do this? Just like the text said, we're gonna talk about these things over breakfast. We're gonna talk about them on the drive to school. We're gonna talk about them at the dinner table. We're gonna talk about Jesus before we go to bed. When we are a Jesus-centered family, God is not a part of our lives. He's not an add-on. He's not an optional feature. He's not just someone we call on when we're in trouble. God is our life. God is the foundation of our family. And that's a big difference between being a cultural Christian and a Jesus follower. So, but here you go. We gotta ask the question, what has gone wrong? What has gone wrong? I mean, if you look at teenagers all over, they're hurting, they're afraid, they're entitled, they're prideful, they're desperate, their identities are confused, they're depressed, they're suicidal, they're hurting themselves, they're confused about who they are. So we have to ask the question, what has gone wrong? Now, I wanna give us three traps I think we fall into as parents. You can take notes on this on your outline. And I wanna give us three traps that keep us from our kids from growing. The first trap is this, we risk too little. We risk too little. And then you would probably agree that for many families today, pain and risk avoidance is one of our top values in parenting. So we're gonna keep them as safe as possible, not let anything bad happen to them. And I'm not trying to be this guy, but I'm gonna be this guy. Back in my day, I grew up in a generation where parents sent your kids outside to play. And the two rules my parents gave me were, listen to your older brothers and be home before it gets dark. Those are the two rules that we had. We didn't have Apple AirTags in our shoes, tracking every step we made. You know, we would take a couple dollars to the gas station, and we would buy a whole bag of candy and soda, and the candy back then had extra Red 40 on it. Soaked in it. It was great. I remember riding in the back of my dad's pickup truck, not in the back seat, like in the back of the pickup truck. And nobody cared, you know, you know, I'm hanging out. They don't care. You know, it's good. And seatbelts, we didn't need to wear seatbelts back in the day because the best seatbelt was your mama. So when you hit the brakes, mama went boom! Ain't no seatbelt love you like a mama's seatbelt. I'm joking, you should wear helmets and wear seatbelts. Those are good things to do. But there is a difference, though. There is a difference in how we raise kids today. Now, here's the challenge. In our effort to protect our kids from pain, we might be actually robbing them from confidence, from learning how to be confident. We have young adults that I know who are afraid to make doctor's appointments. There's one young adult I know specifically whose mom still makes her dental appointments and goes to the dentist with her. She's 26 with a grown job. Like, why is mom going with you to the dentist? You know, but this is a real problem that we have. More young adults are refusing to take management position jobs than ever before because they don't feel like they can. They don't feel like they can. And so we just have to ask ourselves, and when we remove every risk from our kids' lives, we just don't rob them of confidence. I want you to get this. We rob them of the opportunity to trust God. To lean into God. To ask God for help. Because why would I ask God for help when I can just know my mom and dad are gonna bail me out of this one. See, sometimes faith grows when we step into something uncomfortable. Hebrews 11 says it like this, "And without faith, it is impossible to please God." You wanna know how you can't please God? Don't have any faith. But with big faith, man, you can please God all the time. Trap number two we fall into is this. We rescue too quickly. We rescue too quickly. And I am number one guilty of this one. This one is my biggest problem right here. For example, my daughter regularly forgets her water bottle before going to school, even though we have like a nice chart at our door of everything you need to get before you leave the house, all this good stuff. And when I see her water bottle in the kitchen or wherever, guess what I always do? I always go to the school, she goes to Gordon, and there's this nice lady who works at the school, and her name's Miss Brown. Every time I walk in with the water bottle, Miss Brown looks at me, and she just gives me this look. I was like, "I'm sorry, Miss Brown, I don't want her to be thirsty all day." You know? But we rescue too quickly. The truth is, if I let her go the whole day thirsty, she's going to remember to bring her water bottle the next day. And so, but we do that. And yes, we want to make sure their needs are being met, but in the process, we can actually be robbing them of one of the best things they can learn. This is so good and this is good for you. Because we want to know one of the best things you can learn especially in your discipleship to Jesus. One of the best things that you and our kids and I and us we can learn is consequences. Life comes with consequences. But if we try to hide our kids from consequences, they're never gonna learn. One of the best coaches that you can have in your life is Coach Consequence. He'll teach you a lot. She'll teach you a lot. So we gotta let them learn. Galatians 6 says this, "A man reaps what he sows." And think about the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15, one of my favorite stories in the Bible. He made terrible decisions, lost everything, disrespected his parents when he hit rock bottom. And what did the father do in the story? He didn't prevent the consequences. He didn't prevent the consequences that his son faced when he ran off and was doing the stanky leg and the clubs and all that good stuff, he didn't do that. But you wanna know what the father did do? When the son came to his senses, the father was watching and ran to him ready to welcome him. See, God doesn't prevent consequences, but God always lavishes on grace when we come back to him. And so I wanna let you know, we gotta let our kids, sometimes before we bail our kids out, we gotta let them fail, but then we gotta remind them that we're always here for you when you come home. Come on, is that good? Okay, and because that's how God feels about you too. God will let you fail a little bit. God will let you feel your consequences from that decision and that thing and those things that you're doing. And it's not because he's mad, it's not because he's angry, but he knows the consequences can ultimately lead you back to him where you will experience him with open arms of grace where he'll put a ring on your finger, a robe on your back and put some new Nikes on your feet. Come on, somebody. So, there we go. And so sometimes the most loving thing we can do is allow our kids to learn from their mistakes. Third trap, third trap, I'm gonna get a little bit faster. Third trap, we model too weakly. We model too weakly. Our kids don't just become what we tell them to be, they often become what they see us doing. So we say we're a Christian family, but we don't pray, forgive, or give, or serve. We say Jesus is at the center, but our lives tell a different story. And then we wonder why our kids aren't interested in faith. Because our kids are more likely to follow the faith we live than the faith that we preach. Jesus says it like this in Mark 7, he says, "These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me." Did you know God loves your singing, God loves your worship, God loves when you do that, but God, more than that, He loves your heart. And did you know that when you feel your heart under attack, that's typically when you make some of the worst decisions you wish you didn't make. And so we gotta constantly be surrendering our heart back to God. Like every day, like every day. You wanna know a good prayer that you can pray as soon as that annoying alarm wakes you up? God, I surrender my heart to you. Every night I walk up to my middle son, James, and I put my hand on his heart and I said, "How was your heart today?" He always says, "Good." Anyone make you mad today? No. Were you mad at anyone today? Yes. I said, protect your heart, buddy.'Cause from it, the wellsprings of life come. And so, here you go. And so, now, we're never gonna be perfect. We're never gonna be perfect, but if we consistently claim one thing and consistently live something else, our children will run from the things of God. So we risk too little, we rescue too quickly, we model too weakly. So how do we raise kids who genuinely love Jesus? I wanna introduce this to what I call the law of exposure. The law of exposure. Who and what you expose your children to will shape who they become and what they believe. See, here you go. We can't make our kids love Jesus, but we can create an environment where loving Jesus becomes natural. We can, we can. So the first thing is this, you write on your outline. We want to expose our children to the joy of knowing God personally. Knowing God personally. And that's just not like knowing God, like knowing who's gonna be the next quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks 'cause they keep running through quarterback. So the Philadelphia Eagles, we have another new quarterback. I just don't know them. It's knowing in my heart, I know you. We want to introduce, expose our kids to knowing Jesus faithfully in their hearts. And so we want our kids to grow up watching us actually live with Jesus. We want our kids to see us not just talk about Jesus, but to enjoy Jesus, to depend on Jesus, to be changed by Jesus. We want them to see what happens when an ordinary person builds their entire life around the presence and power of God. Because more than anything, we want our kids to see a life with Jesus that is so beautiful, that is so compelling and so full of joy that they want that life for themselves. We want to live a life with Jesus that makes our kids want to live a life with Jesus. John 17 says this, "Now this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God." Did you know that God wants to know you? God wants to know you and he wants you to know him. He calls out for you, deep cries out to deep. He wants to know you, not just know about you. And he doesn't want you just to know about him. He wants you to know him through and through, through and through. So how do we do that? How do we expose them to this? One of the most, I'm gonna be really practical here, okay? One of the most important things we do at the Gaines house is family dinner, come on. Keep it simple, family dinner. I think it's one of the most important things to prioritize is sitting down at the table together and eating dinner. It's so important. And at dinner, we go around the table and we ask three questions. What was my high for the day? What was my low for the day? And where did I see God? And where did I see God? And rarely do my five-year-old boys say,"Well, while playing at the playground, Dad, I felt the movement of the Holy Spirit to tell Billy to stop picking his nose." You know, that doesn't really happen. You know, that doesn't really happen. But what it does, it exposes them to an environment where it's normal to talk about God. Where we're teaching them what it means to see God in their daily life. And we're creating environments where our kids want to have discussions about God. And as a Jesus-centered family, we want conversations about God, faith, serving others, becoming like Jesus to be the normal part of our everyday conversations. We don't want Jesus to be someone we talk about on our way to church on Sunday, and we don't want the conversation to go like,"Do we have to go?" We want them to be a part of our everyday conversation. Erin and I, we try to be intentional. We don't always get it right, but we try our best to be intentional with our kids. One year, Kingsley, our daughter, was having a hard time at school and some of the kids in her class were being really disruptive and causing problems. And the teacher, she felt the teacher was spending all their time with the problem kids and not the kids who were trying to do their best. And so she was coming home pretty stressed and frustrated. And my instant reaction, I wanted to rescue quickly. I wanted to let the principal know, I wanted to let people know that you're not paying attention to my kid. That's what I wanted to do. But instead, but instead, we felt like it was an opportunity to teach Kingsley something so valuable that a lot of our young people don't have and I think it's so important is we wanted to teach her empathy. And so we sat her down and we said, well, how would you feel, Kingsley, if you spend all this time working on a curriculum, working on a lesson and you go to teach it and everyone's talking, how would that make you feel? And she said, sad, mad. And I said, well, that's probably how your teacher feels. And so now we know exactly where we can pray for her. And so every night we just begin to pray for her teacher, that there will be joy in the classroom, that the kids will listen. And then we ended up doing this thing at our church called Invite Your Teacher to Church Day during Teacher Appreciation Week. And we made gift baskets and stuff. And Kingsley invited her teacher, her teacher came out and she saw a complete different environment in her classroom for the rest of the year. Come on, isn't that good? Isn't that good? And that's the, so now our daughter knows that when someone's making me mad, because I told her, I said, you always gonna have leaders that fail you. You always gonna have leaders that aren't doing the best you want, but you can pray for them. And now she knows, well, my weapon isn't complaining, my weapon is prayer. And that's a better weapon than complaining about things. And so eventually, yeah, so yeah, that's what we wanna do. We want our homes to be, and this is why, because we want our homes to be the safest place for our kids to wrestle with faith, to ask hard questions, to process their doubt. And so as parents, we want to model that we are people of prayer, that we talk to God, that we listen to God, that we seek God in His word. And so another thing that my kids do, they do it most mornings, Erin and I, we spend daily time with God in the morning. And so when they wake up, they often come down and see us spending time with God together. And they started to get their own journals. And they write and they've got their little picture that they draw in it. And then what's interesting enough, on Sundays, you know, a couple of years ago, my daughter, when she was around six, she knew I came to church every Sunday early to help with the setup team. And so she wanted to be around her dad. And so she said, "Can I help serve with the setup team?" And so guess what? She started coming and helping. Then my middle son, James, wanted to know where Kingsley went on Sunday mornings. And so he said, "Well, can I come and serve at the church too on Sundays?" And I said, "Of course you can." And so every week, Kingsley and James, and along with their cousins, faithfully set up everything that you see in the church. Did you know the reason why you have sound today is because my five-year-olds set up the sound. And I wonder what your excuse is for coming early for setup, okay? And so, but because we wanna make it a normal part of life, because now when they serve at church, it's not just, oh, dad has to go to church. They see church, it's their church. It's their church, they're a part of it, it's their faith. See, I don't want my kids to have a secondhand faith. I don't, they don't need to have my faith. They don't need it. I want them to have their own firsthand faith with God. And my job, my responsibility is to introduce them to it. This is to introduce them to it. And to make it look like something they want to do.'Cause there's a lot of voices out there that makes them wanna do other things that I'm not doing. There's a lot of social media and YouTubers that are making boats on islands with their friends and preaching to them that they can be MrBeast and all that good stuff. And you don't have to work hard. And you can just eat candy and be on YouTube and that's it. There's a lot of voices out there. And I just want the best I can to make my voice a little bit louder. And to show them that a life lived for Jesus, even though it requires a lot of sacrifice, oh man, it's worth it. It's worth it. Okay, so here we go. Second thing is this, second thing is this. Expose them to the presence and power of God in his church. So we want to expose them to knowing God personally. And the second thing is we want to expose them to the presence of power of God in his church. You know, let me be clear about something, okay? If you come home after church and complain all the worship music wasn't that good today, Jacob told us to spend daily time again. Like when he's gonna give us the meat, I want to know some Greek or something, yeah, yeah, yeah. You go home, talk about church drama or such-and-such did this and such-and-such did that. You want to know what's happening? You are being used by the devil to make your kids have a distrust for church. You are. And Satan actually loves when you come to church and then talk negative about church. He's like, "Keep on coming. I hope that church grows." Because he wants the next generation to distrust the church. Psalm 92 says this, "Those who are planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God." Those who are planted, if you're just a casual, cultural, Christian family, you go to church every now and then, whenever it fits into your schedule. But if you are a Jesus-centered family, you'll be planted in the house of the Lord. And those who are planted, the Bible tells us, will flourish in the courts of the Lord. So what isn't optional in your family? For most of us, I don't think it's an option for our kids to go to school or not. They're going whether they want to or not. Homework isn't optional. You know, going to the dentist shouldn't be optional. You know, whatever activities they're in, dance, soccer practice, football, violin, scuba diving, I don't know, whatever your kids do. Those aren't, they aren't optional. But I tell you right now, and we aren't perfect at this, but one thing that my kids never ask, are we going to church today? They never ask. Even when we're on vacation, even when we're on vacation, we'll watch an online church service or do a family devotional if you can't get to a church, because it's that important. We're Christian. We love Jesus. We go to church. That's what we do. And here's another thing. The moment your kids, like I said, start serving, the church becomes their own. They can come with you to set up, or hang back with teardown. If you're on our hospitality team, have your kid greet with you before they go to kids' church. You know, if they're on the worship team, teach them how to play drums. Come on. If you often prioritize something over church, we're not going to church this weekend because the big game. We're not going to church this weekend because, you know, we need to sleep in, we had a busy week. We're not going to church this weekend because the weather's too bad. We're not going to church this weekend because the weather's too good. If you often prioritize something over church and never prioritize church, you clearly are demonstrating what you value as a family. I mean, this is so true. Jesus, I want to be first so we start in our own hearts. We call on Him on our own hearts. We seek His word. We seek Him daily. We spend daily time with Him. We pray and we even apologize to our kids when we get it wrong. We say we messed up and Jesus convicted me of that. I want you to know that. See, one of the best ways, one of the best way God parents you is through parenting. It's through parenting, it's through parenting. That's the way. So here you go, last story I'll tell. One time we were at the park and this little boy pushed Jameson, my middle son out of the way. And my daughter Kingsley walked up to that boy and said, "You hit my brother, you go to him right now and say sorry." I thought that little boy was about to pee on himself. And I was watching from a distance like,"You get on, Kingsley." Yeah, I felt so proud as a dad and she knew how to defend her brother. There's times as a parent, man, you feel like you got it. And there's other times as a parent, you feel like, "Man, I messed this one up." Like, oh, I can't believe I did that. Can't believe I reacted that way. Can't believe I said that. I can't believe I chose that thing. Can't believe I'm putting them in so many sports to fulfill something that I'm longing for and it's not really what they want. I can't believe I'm doing all these things. And this is why I wanna say something I learned. I'm not responsible for controlling my kids' future. I'm responsible for helping them build a relationship with God who holds their future. That's my responsibility. Because one day, they won't need me. They won't. They need to, there's a lot right now, but one day, but my goal is not to make them dependent on me. If my goal was to make them dependent on me, well, I'm failing. My goal is to gradually over time, transfer dependence on me onto their heavenly father who will never leave them or forsake them. I'm a sinner saved by grace. I'm gonna get it wrong. But they serve a God who never failed and it won't start with them. And so I wanna end with this. The Holy Spirit dropped this on my heart this morning. Wasn't a part of my original manuscript, as you can say.

But Matthew 6, Matthew 3: 31:23

16, it's not in your outline. It says this, "As soon as Jesus was baptized, He went up out of the water. At that moment, heaven was opened, and He saw the Spirit of God descending on, descending like a dove and alighting on Him. And a voice from heaven said," check this out, "This is my Son, whom I love. With him I am well pleased." When I was going over the message this morning, I felt the Holy Spirit nudge me and say, "Jacob, there's people in here who are gonna hear you talk about parenting that don't know that I love them, that I'm their father, God, and I love them." And I want you to see what we see in this verse. It's beautiful 'cause it's one of the only times in scriptures that we see the Trinity all interacting together. Jesus is baptized, the Spirit of God falls upon him. Then the voice of God cries out, "This is my son, whom I love, with him I am well pleased." So we see the Spirit of God empowering Jesus for the ministry that's to come. The Spirit of God empowers him, empowers Jesus for what's to come. But what are the words of Father God? Father God could have said anything, and you will fulfill the promise that made to David, that made to David. You will be the Messiah. But what does the Father say to the Son? This is my Son, whom I love. With him I am well pleased. So we see in this moment, Jesus is empowered by the Spirit and affirmed by the Father. Whew! He's empowered by the Spirit and affirmed by His Father, God. Meaning Jesus, before you do anything great, I love you just for who you are. Jesus, before you go and these miracles, before you change lives, before you open blind eyes and cause the dead to rise, before you go to a cross bearing the sin of everyone who ever lived, before you do any of that, Jesus, I love you. I'm well pleased with you. You're my boy. You're my boy. And I felt the Father wanting to say to you today, before you do anything of importance or even in the trouble that some of your decisions have caused, He looks at you. Says, you're my girl, you're my son. And he affirms you. And from that place, come on, come on, get this, LVC, from that place we can follow God with everything inside of us, not from a place of, if I do better, then God's gonna love me more. If I get this right, if I stop this thing, if I fix this thing then and everything's, no, no, no, no, no. Just from the place, there's nothing more that you can do but be my kid. From that place, Jesus changed the world. And from that place, your life, your life, well, your life can be changed, and it's a beautiful thing. So God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, we thank you for your love. We thank you for your goodness. We thank you that your Spirit falls upon us and empowers us, and we thank you, Heavenly Father, that you affirm us and say you are well pleased with us. And yes, right now, I just pray the Father's heart over every single person in this room, that the Father loves you, that there is nothing that can separate you from His love, and that your sins, your sins, are as far from the east as to the west, and that your Father runs to you, He hugs you, He kisses you. Father, would you help us understand that a little bit deeper today? Father, would you help us get that a little bit more today? And I just want to pray right now for people in here with adult children, and maybe you have some regrets. There's some tensions, there's some decisions, there's some... Holy Spirit, I pray for your healing power in those relationships. Lord, I pray for forgiveness to happen. I pray for restored relationships, in Jesus' name. That's for the Holy Spirit saying, don't stop praying. Don't stop praying. I also feel the Holy Spirit saying, own up. Okay, so own it. All right, Holy Spirit. Come, Holy Spirit. Yep, and I feel the Holy Spirit saying,"Today is a good day to get back up again. Today is a good day to try it again." So, God, we pray for your grace, we pray for your love, we pray over our families, Lord. We love you in this place today and we need you. In Jesus' name, the church says, amen. Amen. Come on, let's give God some praise in here today.